1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a call receiving device, a call receiving method, and a call receiving program.
2. Discussion of the Background
Pay-per-click systems have been used as one method of advertising using web pages on the Internet. A pay-per-click system is a system in which an advertising agency charges an advertisement fee to an advertiser according to the number of times an item of advertisement information displayed on a web page is clicked.
For example, when advertisement information of the advertiser is posted on a web page of an advertisement providing site and a user who has viewed the page selects (clicks) the advertisement information, a website managed by the advertiser is linked to and the user can view detailed information regarding the advertisement information. In addition, according to the number of clicks made on the advertisement information, the advertiser pays an advertisement fee to the administrator of the portal site.
This method is frequently used in portal (entrance) sites that have many users (viewers) and are capable of providing high advertising effectiveness. The administrator of the portal site establishes frames for advertisements as part of the site page, runs advertisements by lending the frames for advertisements to advertisers, and collects advertisement fees according to the number of clicks made on each item of advertisement information.
However, this pay-per-click system has a problem in that, when an advertiser does not have their own site, no site can be set to be linked to and no detailed information regarding the advertisement information can be provided. Moreover, because payment of an advertisement fee is generated simply through clicks made on advertisement information, the effect of “direct contact with users (clients)” cannot be obtained for the cost of advertising.
Moreover, because the advertisement fee is generated according to the number of clicks made even when a user unintentionally clicks the advertisement information or intentionally repeats clicking, the association between the advertising effectiveness and the advertisement fee may be decreased.
Therefore, another system has been suggested in which a phone number corresponding to each advertiser is posted on a web page of an advertisement providing site along with the advertisement information, and when a user who has seen the information calls the advertiser, an advertisement fee is charged based on the establishment of the phone call. One of the systems using this advertising method is referred to as a Pay-Per-Call system, such as the one described in Japanese Patent Application Publication (KOKAI) No. 2005-115945, for example.
However, when posting advertisement information on a plurality of advertisement providing sites, if all of the posted phone numbers are uniformly the same number, it is impossible to distinguish which advertisement providing site the user has seen to make the phone call. Therefore, there is a problem in that it is impossible to ascertain which advertisement providing sites have high advertising effectiveness and which advertisement providing sites have low advertising effectiveness.
Therefore, another method has been suggested in which different phone numbers are allocated for each item of advertisement information and posted on different advertisement providing sites in order to ascertain, based on the phone number the user calls, which advertisement providing sites the user has seen to make the phone call (e.g., refer to WO2007/015531).
Based on the posting of advertisement information according to this pay-per-call system, for example, a call of inquiry may be made at midnight by a user. However, if that time falls within non-business hours, the advertiser cannot respond directly to the call being made. Therefore, in recent years, depending on the time, the call from the user may be transferred to, for example, an agent specializing in phone-receiving businesses that are referred to as a call center, and the call center responds to the call.
If the call from the user is transferred to this call center, a call responder is necessary to ascertain the details of the user's call regarding the relevant merchandise and where it is posted. In addition, if the user wishes to purchase the merchandise, various items of information must be ascertained, such as payment information related to the purchase and delivery-destination information for delivering the merchandise.
However, in the method in which a receptionist ascertains merchandise information, etc. by inquiring about the merchandise information, advertisement information etc. from the user over the phone, information transmission is not secured because the user may misspeak and/or the receptionist may mishear the information. The merchandise information etc. is associated with the phone number of the user, and it may be possible to reliably ascertain the merchandise information etc. if the receptionist ascertains the phone number. However, because the phone number is typically numeric information with a plurality of digits and, in some cases, may be numeric information with approximately 17 digits, it is still difficult for the receptionist to reliably ascertain a plurality of items of numeric information.